#259: Hell Target (1987)

 

Studio: Nakamura Production

Director: Keito Nakamura

Screenplay: Kenichi Matsuzaki

Voice Cast: Akira Murayama as Kitazato McRoe; Katsunosuke Hori as Hans Kruger; Kōichi Chiba as Yura Treyanov; Gara Takashima as Meryl Brown; Hirotaka Suzuoki as Harry Howard; Ikuya Sawaki as Rico Fernandez; Kaneto Shiozawa as; Jean Müller/Jean Myaura ; Shingo Hiromori as Chan Li; Sumi Shimamoto as Tiki Carmack

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

In the far-flung future, a space ship ventures out to a strange red world where a previous crew were lost upon - looking like copper art at times where you need to scratch the black surface of for the image created underneath, especially due to the history of this one-off straight to video work in terms of preservation. It is pretty much an early warning of what they are in for when one of their male crew members dreams of a monster perusing them on the landmass they will land on.

Note, out of many OVAs, Hell Target can be found in a version best described as shot through a dirty sock, a title which strangely never got a Western release despite the fact even Roots Search (1986), a notorious sci-fi horror one-off, managed to in the day. Travelling to this planet, the ominously named Inferno II for mission, obviously you get the vibes of this being another anime riffing on Alien (1979), as did many live action films in the day too. In truth, this is probably riffing on one of the films trying to capitalise on Alien's success in the ultimate irony, as the premise here, of a place of monsters who attack and kill their victims by psychically filling their minds with hallucinations based on their fears, evokes the Roger Corman produced Galaxy of Terror (1981), of a similar premise.

It is a curious touch in terms of what inspired this - compare this to Lily C.A.T. (1987), a feature length one-off which was released in the West and was openly a remake of Alien in its own way - and as a result, this has its own idiosyncratic mood, of a strange gigantic monsters who yet kill by causing hallucinations, such as snow falling inside a cockpit despite being also on a desert planet. There is a satanic mood or at least a demonic one too to these figures, with supernatural edges to them, and fittingly, in the best way for any anime from this era, it gets stranger in its aesthetic choices in depicting this which stand out. The acidic blood is taken from Alien for one of the few ultra gory scenes, a reminder of what era this horror tale comes from, but there are definitely gorier titles from the time, and eventually you do see some idiosyncratic touches which this can proudly say managed to make its own. Zombies of former victims is obviously expected but a Valkyrie attacking a space ship on a flying horse is not a sentence I would have had to include for science fiction, nor one eyed spirit God birds. Credit the anime, it goes for a weird mash-up of ideas than just remake Alien, if structured around the simple template of a slasher in picking the crew off one-by-one.

In terms of the story altogether, Hell Target can be accused of being very simplistic as the cast do fit the term "disposable" filly, which is going to be something you have to accept though with the advantage this is at least less than fifty minutes. They do not even really fit stereotypes either, barring the two who matter, the female lead who is stereotyped as more "feminine" and in peril a great deal of the work, and the stoic male lead, and barring the abrupt moment the pair have a sex scene, to clear their heads after witnessing their colleagues get slaughtered on mass and terrorised by the likes of a sentient tank, there is nothing that remotely ludicrous or distinct about this cast beyond that moment. One of the obvious issues that you can see in a lot of animated and live action works inspired by Alien, all in spite of the fact that film explicitly went out of its way to make its characters idiosyncratic, is how you can end up with a lot of pure "canon fodder" which you cannot even appreciate as stereotypes, a risk also the slasher genre can suffer from, and this anime production does as well.

It helps the work has an ending you could find in a macabre horror tale, bleak in outcome, Hell Target a work that has to be appreciated as part of a moment of single entry productions which allowed their creators to improvise original stories and flex, even if as full narratives they are not all perfect. This title came from Nakamura Production, a company who are prolific in areas like in-between animation to 2nd key animation, a studio who deal with working on productions for others in a vast number of titles, from entries in the Gundam franchise to the series adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Work like this is important for animation, but they themselves only produced one work of their own in Hell Target, which is strange to consider, that for a company founded in 1974, they exist more as a support studio for others and only expressed themselves this once. This title, again, surprisingly never got a release in the West despite not having any specific cultural traits as a Japanese production, and found itself in danger of potentially being lost were it not for amateur online perseveration, making it a legitimately curiosity thankfully preserved in some way even if not necessarily a masterpiece in its context.

#258: Pani Poni Dash! (2005)

 

Studio: Shaft

Director: Shin Oonuma (Series Director); Akiyuki Shinbo (Director)

Screenplay: Kenichi Kanemaki

Based on the manga by Hekiru Hikawa

Voice Cast: Chiwa Saito as Rebecca "Becky" Miyamoto; Ai Nonaka as Ichijō-san; Fumiko Orikasa as Himeko Katagiri; Kana Ueda as Kurumi Momose; Kayo Sakata as Sayaka "Rokugo" Suzuki; Satsuki Yukino as Rei Tachibana; Yui Horie as Miyako Uehara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Pani Poni Dash was a title I saw very early into my interest into anime in the 2000s – a strange period with hindsight, now ADV Films, who distributed this, no longer exist, and for some inexplicable reason we once bought anime in three to four episodes per disc as separate releases for one television series, this one such case in the day, without questioning the cost of this. Available together through the likes of Crunchyroll in the streaming era, one of the biggest reasons I was not a fan of this in the day was that I felt it was “too weird” back then and too random. Neither helping is that, back then, it felt like the version of Azumanga Daioh (2002) you had back home, which is mean to both shows, completely missing the point of both series. Daioh is very different to this, though one of the biggest flaws with this series still, whilst I have grow to appreciate it considerably, is that if this had followed the high school clichés more, I think this would have been a great show rather than a funny one, which starts to deviate too much with its indulgences than use them to parody that genre.

Starting with a Planet of the Apes parody, one of the many parodies Western and Japanese you will see, we are introduced to Rebecca Miyamoto, a Japanese-American prodigy who is able to become a high school teacher at eleven years old, teaching Class 1C at Peach Moon Academy. There are arguably too many characters, including the other classes, but to give you the idea of who we have in Class 1C in their anime versions there is: Himeko Katagiri, a hyper-active but lovable doofus whose cowlick is literally the source of her energy as reveal early on; Ichijō, managing to top the weirdness scale as a strange figure able to summon rain to willingly poisoning classmates, even able to see the aliens spying on Rebecca from orbit; Miyako Uehara, somewhat the geeky stereotype there to be annoyed and have a shiny forehead; Rei Tachibana, the most mature if capable of being vindictive, the glue to keep everyone together; Sayaka Suzuki (No. 6), who does suffer from a lack of characterization if with a lovable charm; and Kurumi Momose, where the joke is that she is the bland and normal one, giving her an existential crisis, as well as introducing a legitimately funny running gag that, as a result, she is the one who reacts to the increasingly insane events as most of us would, with bafflement, until the point she begins to accept the screwed up logic of the world. Then there is Mesousa, probably the most depressed rabbit in all of media, even over the insanely twisted humour of Andy Riley’s The Book of Bunny Suicides (2003) comic, in terms of the most depressed, put upon and poorest bugger of the species in media, whose depression and lack of fingers makes him hapless and lovable. Even before the cat in the school vending machine, who claims to be literal God, starts to torment him, Mesousa is the parody of cute animal sidekicks in dire need of a hug if Kurumi Momose was not already hanging out with him in the school rabbit hutch depressed she was call bland again. The aliens, as mentioned, are a Greek chorus, if accidentally breaking the rule to not interfere with the earthlings a few times, studying Rebecca as a subject and add their own amusement as a group too.

The show to its credit does have a good gag for everyone, but there are a lot of characters beyond this. Some of parodies of anime and manga, such as Behoimi, the magical girl who has no actual powers, whilst others include a very clumsy girl, an extravagant girl who brings exotic animals to class, the war between a film club and drama club pair of girls where they do not know their real identities and start to bond, and a few male characters, including the elderly teacher which a foot in the morbid and occult. A personal favorite are two other girls who are a double act, a shorter raven haired girl named Otome Akiyama who clearly has a friendship with the other girl, the considerably taller Suzune Shiratori who does have an affection for her, even if it means tormenting Otome and trying to constantly use the pressure point on her head to keep her permanently short. To say the show has a lot within it to accept is to realize by episode three, when the cowlick Himeko has is shown as not only sentient but has unnatural abilities, you also get a random Batman Returns (1992) Cat Woman parody, and some twisted jokes like the student ending the episode dead behind class 1C’s blackboard when trying to spy on them. A camping episode early on reveals kappa, the mythological creatures of Japan’s folklore, are experimenting in their own rocket space project in the deepest Japanese woods. By episode thirteen of twenty six episodes, the first of a few robot parodies appears, and by episode ten earlier, Behoimi and a newly introduced character, a maid named Media who knows her from their mysterious military pass, are disarming remote bombs around the school whilst everyone goes through their school vacation projects. It is that kind of show.

One of the hugest things about this show, and is one of its best virtues, is the production value, which is not a surprise when this is a studio Shaft production where, whilst he is not the series director, the director underneath Shin Oonuma is Akiyuki Shinbo. Akiyuki Shinbo, and Shaft in general, emphasize a distinct art style and willingness to experiment, such as in Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), and this is not different, a parody anime where the production team were just allowed to indulge in their most experimental side. The premise is blown up countless time and the fourth wall is constantly mocked, with scenes shown to be on a stage being directed by a film crew. Various visual gags transpire, such as “Punishment Pinball” in episode 7, or RPG game parodies, which change the aesthetic considerably, as there is the use of real images especially for food as collage. Even how to get around painstaking depicting the whole class, replicating the same character models over and over, is stylized and has moments when the production switch this up with figures from fashion magazines with disturbing open smiles. Weird sight gags, parodies or plain non- sequitur fill the screen, and you will see R. Lee Ermey in his Full Metal Jacket (1987) appearance as a screenshot at random times for no reason, like how the show starts to get more invested into parodying anime and manga the more episodes pass. It is not obvious things either like a Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), but ones which are explicitly for the Japanese viewership or those who get the reference, such as changing the characters’ designs to briefly match Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō, or explicitly referring to the work in character design of Riyoko Ikeda. Sadly they only start to appear near the end of the series, but some fo the funniest, because you do not need to get the references to appreciate the melodramatic clichés it is touching on, are all the elaborate excuses Himeko has for being late to class, most of which are shoujo manga parodies. Even the music is eclectic, with even yodeling bursting through the soundtrack at one point, and deserves credit for its unpredictability.

The randomness does need to be accepted – like the entire tangent about a lost Holed Pasta Civilization which learnt the ability to make them from aliens, at least to how Himeko views them, or how the aliens, when not causing problems or being noticed even by Ichijō’s todder sister through their viewing telescope, eventually start to look like the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Honestly the biggest issue with Pani Poni Dash is eventually the school setting is just a location by the final episodes, feeling like it is bored with the set-up and more concerned with the world being threatened by an asteroid, an Edo period chambara parody, or Himeko being possessed by a sentient space mushroom. The space mushroom is so strange it is funny, but honestly, the show starts to get too indulgent and baggy by its last episodes, when consistency would have been found more if this content was forced onto high school anime clichés fully.

The Azumanga Daioh comparison is apt even if entirely different comedies, where Daioh took the time frame of school events, from sports day to the cultural festival, and had moments of legitimately strangeness too to contrast its jokes about things real teenagers would go through with school. Pani Poni Dash could have been the weirder parody, where an episode mentioned early on, disarming bombs juxtaposed with the school vacation projects being talked of in class, fully shows when this duality works perfectly. The show is funny, visually creative, and I cannot have anything but admiration for all the female voice actors here; comedies, especially ones this idiosyncratic, where there is all the gags and vocal changes, even the idiosyncrasies of the casts’ like Sayaka Suzuki calling everything the “most ---- of the year”, provide Herculean vocal stretching to test anyone, and I admire the dexterity of all the cast for ridiculous some of the scenes and moments get. The reason as mentioned I was not a fan of this in the day was because this gets weird for the sake of it, to the point it seems like the concept of being a high school anime parody is a pretense. With time having past, how weird the series is was not an issue in the slightest, even when I am lost, but that it could have tried to force itself more onto its high school story premise becomes the lost opportunity. There is a cultural festival episode, but not for example a sports day one, and that feels like a lot of lost moments could have been done with all the idiosyncratic characters and reoccurring gags this show does have, leading to funnier moments.

Pani returned, abruptly in a 2009 OVA, effectively a one-off new episode also by Shaft, which was clearly used to advertise the manga, still going in from 2000 to 2011. It is obscure to the point I had no idea of its existence until I had returned to the original series, not included with the original work in streaming or a physical release in the West. Even the opening credits are the same, and it feels like a run back in nice comfortable shoes for the voice cast and the production team to a work they liked. Only some tame fan service, mild titillation, suggest anything remotely different, alongside the questionable decision to dress Rebecca, in an antagonist's role, in a tweens' size Germanic black uniform, which we will just ignore as a poor choice. It would have actually been a good episode in the source series, actually emphasizing the better virtue of having normal school activities distorted in an absurd touch, here how Rebecca's class and a couple others have failed exams but have a chance to avoid retest if they can beat the school tradition of "Kick the Can". This is an all day event where they have in a school day until 5pm, without all of them being caught by their persuaders, to kick the aforementioned soda can. It definitely has jokes to remind you this is Pani Poni Dash, such as the aliens returning with a parody of scenes of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, represented in close parody caricature, from Michael Mann's Heat (1995), but barring some of the more overt light eroticism, this has a lot more good jokes, such as Media the maid and the magical girl, on the pursuers'' side, wishing to protect the can by planting M18 landmines and military defense weaponry around the school. It is the last piece to a work which, baring an internet radio show and spin-off manga on specific characters, has a lot I admired but was in the animated version a show which is flawed entirely because the premise, whilst mad as a box of frogs in tone, has so much you can work with that it is actually not as interesting to be as unpredictable as it was, the punch lines missed of trying to pretend to be a cohesive high school comedy with this motley crew of lovable school girls and miscreants tantalizing in where it could have gone with that dynamic schism.

#257: Zone of the Enders - Dolores, I (2001)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the Zone of the Enders franchise by Konami

Voice Cast: Tesshō Genda as James Links; Houko Kuwashima as Dolores; Mitsuru Miyamoto as Leon Links; Narumi Hidaka as Noel Links; Chō as Baan Dorfloum; Fumihiko Tachiki as Sameggi; Yumiko Nakanishi as Rebecca Hunter; Takehito Koyasu as Nathph Pleminger; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Dr. Rachel Links

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The opening rock theme proclaims the lead may be able to defeat God for all he knows, and this pretty much establishes the tone for what Zone of the Enders the series is. In contrast to the straight to video prologue which began this television adaptation of the Zone of the Enders video game franchise – Idolo (2001), which was a more serious set up for key plot points to this twenty six episode series – Dolores is a much more light hearted, more overtly comedic work whose serious moments are more in tone to an action film. Certainly, whilst with key plot lines also tied to the first 2001 video game, which are not needed for context but appear, this feels a tone different from the other works in this franchise, introducing us to James Links. As a lead he is one you would encounter, as a middle aged man nearing his fifties in futuristic times, piloting his space ship drunk and eyeing up the women. He is however someone with a tragic back-story, with adult children disconnected from him and his wife missing, with the fact he is from Earth and she from Mars part of the world building, as this is a world where the planets despite being both with humans hostile to each other in contrast to their love which crosses literal space. There is also the fact that he is a transporter whose secret cargo will drag him into finding his wife Rachel, said to still be alive after the events of Idolo, and on the run for a murder he did not commit.

It is awesome to have an older male lead, when the joke even for video games from Japan let alone that someone near their thirties or so qualifies them as a grizzled veteran, making this character voiced by Tesshō Genda, a veteran from the seventies who became Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official Japanese dubbing voice, a nice change of pace. It is one of the touches to a story, whilst with clichés, that manages a lot of great things just in terms of a memorable lead, not shy from James being ridiculous with a kitten for an estranged daughter Noel Links’ birthday and a mysterious cargo, pulling him into a conflict between planets, which introduces the titular Dolores, an orbital frame mecha with great power, sentience…but the mind of a teen girl with flights of whimsy who starts calling him “uncle”. Whilst humorous throughout, this with the Zone of the Enders world premise does set up key plot points  - of a racism against Martian born humans from Earth which has caused Martians to secretly plan an extreme coup de trait which will harm both planets, the orbital frames of immense power – even if one of your primary leads is a robot who acts like a naïve niece of the lead, even crushing on him, and a forty nine year old male protagonist who, in attempting to reconnect with him adult children, forced on the lam eventually with him, reads a book of becoming a better father over and over like a sacred scroll. Tragically some family dynamic is lost – Noel, in contrast to her stuffy and gullible brother Leon, is set up as the tough one of the pair, working at the construction site, despite loving her new kitten, only to be sidelined in this factor at some moments – but this show is helped considerably by its characters. A huge virtue coming into this production, with no knowledge of even the games, was that it manages something as simple but difficult to pull off as actually having interesting characters and a world to work with, even if there are plot points here found in many other productions.

In terms of video game adaptations, which are notoriously not well regarded, this is a surprise to see virtually forgotten as, whilst it does play to tropes of this genre, and from Sunrise, a studio behind the Gundam franchise and a lot of mecha shows, this does actually manage to be a solid adaptation. It manages to be respectful and actually create an engaging show even if it clearly takes liberties with the source, in having the comedic undertone, and the idiosyncratic take on sentient artificial intelligence where, alongside the trope of a duality between a wholesome side and the destructive alter ego, your titular lead, especially as she does all the episode preview narration, is a whimsical figure of flights of fancy even if capable of destroying everything in sight. This is more so when she learns the virtue of reading books like Cinderella, and tries to learn by herself how to dance as in episode nine (Lost in Space), or her way of hacking data files envisioning herself in a dress, James in a pink bunny suit, and the hacking interpreted as a fairy tale dream of stealing eggs.

As the story goes, searching for Rachel Links, a key character from Idolo, is of importance, as are the cops after James back from Earth, one of them explicitly a racist against Martians who will even deprive a child of her helmet and oxygen in his psychotic obsession with chasing James down for a murder he was innocent of, as is a character returning from Idolo, becoming the main villain if with the baggage of how they came to be and the problems this world has explaining how he became this villain. There are also requisite child pilots, though thankfully they make sense in context. They are part of the story in which we see, as a result of Earth’s iron grip on Mars and their cruelty, those wanting to find their independence have also unfortunately created those who just want to see Earth burn, even if it destroys Mars by proxy, among the teen trio Rebecca the one member pilot whose only “father” figure is challenged by seeing James’ more heroic fatherly actions, and is the one who represents them fully in character dynamics.

Set five years after the “Deimos Affair”, what is the narrative of the Idolo OVA, this continues the world of Z.O.E., in tiny details which do add character and making one able to invest in this story and producing ideas, even if never seen again, that feed the imagination as sci-fi should. Moving “voice” photos to space catapults that allow fast wormhole-like travel between worlds, or the Sargasso, space garbage dumps for illegally dumping materials by companies around Mars’ orbit. It is all fascinating even if for one episode stories, especially when we get to Mars. Attempting to make Mars habitable is one of the more interesting things, even fantastical, for this think piece burst of imagination, such as Earth creating seaweed which is enormous and producing giant air bubbles to create a breathable atmosphere, famers of giant corn, but also environmental normalists wanting to return Mars to its normal state. An entire new show just looking at Mars would have been compelling from the little we see here, such as a brief section about an abandoned Martian theme park with stereotypical “aliens” as decaying decorations. Sunrise also has an obsession with space elevators, something returned to with Gundam Reconguista in G (2014-15), a maligned and not well regarded entry if for me an entertainingly weird one, as one for Earth in this story is the huge McGuffin in terms of Earth’s peril, one of the more over-the-top science fiction pieces of the show, alongside a fabled ore on Mars which is magical in its abilities in building combat robots, that nonetheless still entice in what they bring up in ideas.

There are layers of cheese at times here – with the cheesiest way to stop Martian and Earth soldiers fighting each other – and until the last episodes, comedy does prevent the story from getting too serious for what is a studio, in Sunrise, used to mecha stories to the point they could produce this one effortlessly. There was clearly a lot of fun here on the production, with just the references alone, from the Martian racist cop figure of Baan starting to call James Links instead “John Carter” after Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ seminal Mars jumping pulp hero, or the person who clearly wanted to name episodes after films like “Total Recall” and “Die Hard”. I highly doubt one episode is named after the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Red Desert (1964), even if I wish that is the case, but episode twelve is literally Die Hard (and has that as the title) on a Martial colony ocean lab; the difference is that it has Bruce Willis replaced by a man trying to save the day with a mecha who has a platonic relationship with him and a cat, even joking about it not being set at Christmas.

Individual episodes really do stand out here, even if the whole builds the story well. Episode four, Final Countdown, has the family attempting to escape Earth with the help of a former astronaut, in his old age still wanting to get to Mars on an old NASA spaceship, set at Cape Canaveral at Florida in an abandoned museum, whilst Family Game, episode seventeen, finally brings James together with the man behind the parenting book he has been learning from, a fun episode with the obvious twist being James has to be the one to offer the parenting advice. The tone even by the end is lighter hearted despite with the raising of its stakes, with comedy beats in-between the impending threat, like a gag to cut through the tension before returning to it. With no expectations whatsoever for this it is really strange, tragically damning, that barring ADV Films releasing this back in the day in the West, this show disappeared with a whimper. It was a production I had never heard of, despite the video game franchise still having good regard especially for Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003), making its vanishing act from the list of Sunrise releases from this era, and mecha series in the 2000s, a real surprise.  I can guess that tonally, with what this does, this would not have necessarily won fans over for the games, but as its own creation, this manages the one thing that so many video game anime do not succeed with, which is actually be solid in a form in quality and managing to actually stick out to be a good show over its twenty six episodes.